


My Baby Shot Me Down

by dionysianrevelry



Series: Hotel California [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: A No Good Rotten Fink, Benny Is A Fink, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gambling, Injury Recovery, Mild Smut, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:26:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26284912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dionysianrevelry/pseuds/dionysianrevelry
Summary: An unfortunately unfortunate meeting in Goodsprings.
Relationships: Benny (Fallout)/Female Courier
Series: Hotel California [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1909822
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29





	My Baby Shot Me Down

**Author's Note:**

> “Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that's good.”  
> -Elizabeth Edwards

“Ain’t you gonna order anything to eat, kid?” 

Jolene looked up to the kind bartender and shook her head. She waved her hand dismissively and turned her attention back to her drink, briefly. 

“No, ma’am. Just the tequila’s fine.” 

It had been a while since she had run packages, at least since the last delivery to Hopeville. After that last trip, she felt weary and wanted to rest, so she focused on delivering _letters_ instead of packages for the last month. Letters weren’t as sought after as packages and made her less of a target to raiders, if all they saw was a plucky, emaciated little Californian runaway without anything useful to them. 

The package she was running now, however, that one burned a hole in the breast pocket. It was _big_ money. Some fat cat on the Strip was gonna pay her _five hundred_ caps to bring them this strange little thing. Hell, it was the only reason she left California. She was going to see the big city of Vegas, get paid good and goddamn well for her troubles, and invest in her future. If she could just get to Vegas, she could use those caps to earn more from the tables. Honestly or not.

_Take that, Dad. Don’t have to slave away in a stiff lab coat for OSI to make something out of myself._

However, as it stood, she barely had enough caps to keep bullets in the chamber of her pistol and the occasional drink of whiskey. One meal a day to last her until Vegas. 

She certainly didn’t start carrying mail for the money. Nor the safety. It was a dangerous profession, one that filled her to the brim with excitement and thrills. There were some days she wasn’t sure if she’d make it out of a delivery run alive and for some reason, the adrenaline of that kept wind in her sails and put miles in her boots. 

If only she could get that old motorcycle working somehow. Maybe she could use some of the caps from the strange job to Vegas to find more parts for it, but she had been through many settlements as of late and barely found enough to make the engine start. Even then, the damn thing sputtered out and jury rigging didn’t seem to cut it. For someone so savvy in the field of robotics, piecing together old pre-war engines was a hobby that remained a work in progress.

Her stomach interrupted her ever-turbulent thoughts about easy travel with a rueful groan and Jolene’s brows immediately set into a frustrated furrow. She held a hand over it and _prayed_ the nice bartender didn’t notice. Trudy, she introduced herself as, had been real kind to her since she stumbled into Goodsprings that morning. It wouldn’t do good to impose. 

“This is what you get for playing a hand with one of Vegas’ best, Khan. Full house.” Jo hears a man say from behind her, at a table proper. 

What an atrociously _ugly_ fucking suit. 

And from what it sounded like, an atrociously ugly attitude to match it. The Khans, presumably, sitting with him seemed upset and shoved a couple of caps his way. It didn’t really look like he needed them. If he was truly one of “Vegas’ best,” then he wouldn’t have any need for the little caps they probably carried with them. She wasn't exactly sure how many caps they were carrying; she didn't really know much about the Khans to make a proper assessment out of the situation. Jo’s eyes drifted down to some movement beneath the table, her peripherals picking up on the card he slid out from his sleeve. 

She laughed. Heartily. 

“He ain’t one of Vegas’ best, he’s just a cheat! Not even a good one, at that.” She called out with a grin, “Had an ace up his sleeve. If he’s Vegas’ best, then there must be some piss poor gamblers on the Strip.” 

“Is that so, toots?” The man in the odd suit said with a sick sort of smile, one that crawled up her spine and settled like the slime on the docks of Lake Mead. “Well, if you’re such an authority on gambling, why don’t you come play me? Or are you just all bark and no bite, little girl?” 

“Gladly!” Jolene sat her glass down on the bar, looking back to Trudy who seemed none too enthused that she was taking his bait. There was something pleading in the older woman's eyes, but she plowed forward regardless with youthful confidence. She rose from her stool and strutted her way over to the table, sliding into the seat next to the fellow with the ugly suit. “Blackjack. Y’all join in too and it might make for a damn good way to pass the evenin’.” 

The Khans seemed a bit miffed, but agreed nonetheless. Seemed a bit twitchy, too, but that wasn't Jo's place to judge. She knew the tell-tale signs of chem abuse and it was written as plain as day in their eyes and how their hands trembled around the cards the clutched tightly.

“Now, darlin’, let’s see what Vegas has to offer.” The corners of her lips turned to a coy smirk up at the man as she took the deck of cards from the middle of the table and shuffled. 

Ten caps to start. She only had a hundred and if she could get away with it, she’d walk away with everything the Vegas man had. Maybe even that dumb fucking suit. 

Her math was hardly ever wrong. Perks of being raised by OSI scientists, if that was all she could glean from her childhood. Her wit was her best attribute, the next being her ability to charm the scales off a nightstalker. The last one was more innate, something she just had in her bones and how she carried herself as if she were the most beautiful pin-up on an NCR propaganda placard instead of a thin, freckled nobody who weighed about a hundred pounds soaking wet. 

The game itself wasn't a particularly difficult one. Hand after hand, Jo sunk into her advantage as one would a second skin, making charming conversation throughout. The group of men seemed tight-lipped, particularly the fucker in the checkered coat. The looks he gave her from across the table lit a heat somewhere in her chest, something close to fear and desire simultaneously. By the end of the night, she has neatly secured around a hundred and fifty extra caps from the pot. The Khans didn’t seem bothered by it and Jo used some of the caps to order them all a round. 

“Well, pussycat, it seems you’ve blown my expectations out of the water by a mile.” Benny, apparently his name was, leaned in with a bit of a smirk on his charming face. 

Charming _now_ , three drinks in. 

“Yeah? I have a habit of doin’ that.” Jolene snickered proudly into her glass of tequila, “I’m gonna change the world, just you wait. You're gonna see my name in the lights of Vegas' marquees.”

His Khan friends seemed to be embroiled in a heated game of billiards behind the wall separating the bar from the sitting area. Jo didn’t really pay them any mind, they were nothing but gentlemen, even after losing some of their caps to her. 

This Benny guy, _shew_. There was something about him. Carefully coiffed hair, cologne from the Old World, and now, the suit didn’t seem so appalling. The way he had to lean into her with unspeakable confidence and the way he tucked a curl of her red hair that had fallen from her haphazardly done bun back out of her face, his eyes lingering on hers for just a little too long. His eyes seemed to flit every so often down to her lips, lingering just long enough for her to notice before coming back up to her eyes. His gaze seemed to drift down to the freckled expanse of her chest, as if enamored by the curve of her breast peaking out from low-buttoned flannel shirt she wore until it was nearly thread-bare. Everything in her gut was telling her not to trust him, and she firmly told herself that she wouldn’t. 

She couldn’t afford to linger in Goodsprings and she doubted that she’d ever see him again after this.

From all the men she had met as of late, he was the only one that wooed her with the old world charm she so adored. That was enough to keep her listening to him as he spoke about Vegas, dazzling her with stories of nights filled only with dancing, imagery of _buffets_ where food was never sparse, and a place where she could hang up her mail satchel and forget her worries. Live for the moment, instead of crawling through the muck trying to keep her life. 

Everything about talking to Benny was unwise, but he kept her wrapped around his finger with each of his colorful descriptions, as if he was reading them from a piece of pre-war literature. 

He spoke so eloquently about how her body would look beautiful wrapped tight in pre-war gowns as she swung slowly to the sounds of jazz in the Tops theater. How she’d _enamor_ a crowd of people at a card table and how even casino management would show her preference. How she would look _jaw-dropping_ gorgeous with red lips to match her fiery red hair. And she ate up every word with a brilliant smile, because he was putting words and his own experiences to the things she _so desperately craved_ out of carrying this odd package to the Strip. 

By the time a couple of hours had passed, it felt only natural that he leaned in to kiss her like a prince ripped right out of the story books she read at the Boneyard as a kid, wooing his pauper with a finger holding her jaw tilted up to his. There was a natural chemistry pulling them together, or at least that was what she _thought._

“Damn, baby… You really _are_ somethin' special, aren’t you?” Benny spoke low, his voice husky with an unmistakable air of seduction, “My God, kitten, that smile could replace the Mojave sun.” 

Jo let out another laugh. She didn’t mean to, but that line was almost god _awful_ and the drinks weren’t helping her play along all that well. Her laugh died down to another effortless smile, her bottom lip folding between her lip to worry at it as she stared down into the amber liquid in her glass. 

“You get all the girls with that line?” She asked with another chuckle lingering close behind, on her breath. 

The man was a player, he _had_ to be. Jo wasn’t going to delude herself away from that. The man knew what kind of effect he had on women and he was damn confident about it. He was a lady killer. A bachelor who never got tied down or worried too much about feelings. 

Something about that brought a heat to the back of Jolene’s neck and it bloomed in her freckled cheeks. She wasn't hardly used to not being the player in interactions.

“Only the most beautiful ones.” He responded effortlessly, his large, calloused hand reaching for hers. 

His fingers were soft over her knuckles, though. Impossibly so. They likely belonged to a man who once knew hardships, but fought his way past them and came out something _more_ . He was an _ideal_ , even if he was incredibly cheesy about it. He pressed her knuckles against his lips and she breathed out a shudder, his lips sending a flutter across the breadth of her chest that threatened to undo her.

When he kissed her knuckles, Jolene found her eyes moving to meet his. The way that this stranger disarmed her should have been illegal, written somewhere under the NCR’s penal code. 

But the NCR’s penal code didn’t hold up for shit in the Mojave. It was every man for himself in this part of the world. 

Her green eyes drifted to his lips and _goddamn_ , the way they were curled up into a smirk could shake her in her worn leather boots. It held a charm that she could believe worthy of being the last thing she ever saw. Now, maybe that was her drunk mind thinking for her, but at that moment, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the way those dark brown eyes of his bore into her with _intent._

Normally, Jolene was on her A-game. She could sweet-talk most men out of their caps in bars with her honeys, sweethearts, and darlings gracing the end of her sentences, and with a coy look shot through bright eyes. Rarely did they ever complain as they watched her leave a room with the caps their wives had sent them off to buy provisions with, so long as she played up the air of being a dim, helpless little Southern girl who knew all the right things to say to make them feel important for the evening. 

But as she talked to his stranger, she felt herself slipping. She was _aware_ that she was slipping, but so long as he kept looking at her like she was the only thing worth looking at in the Mojave, she couldn’t fucking care less. She had never been so hopelessly enthralled as she was with this Vegas boss, so much so that she hadn't even stopped to consider what he was doing in this backwater town to begin with.

“What do you say we get out of here, doll?” His voice lingered on that seductive, husky note, and Jo was powerless to the pull it ensnared her with. 

"About damn time." Jolene breathed out in anticipation, already on her feet. 

It was all a haze, after that. Lips meeting one another in a rush, his rough hands pulling her entire body up to straddle him, like she weighed nothing, until he had her pressed behind the back of the saloon. It was unlike nothing she had experienced and she _loathed_ to think of him leaving, in this moment. The way he touched her was just right, even if he seemed more focused on his own pleasure as they embraced one another under the stars of the dark Mojave night. 

It was easy to get lost in his touches, even if it _was_ a quick tumble behind a bar in the open of the night. Too goddamn easy to relish in the way he pet her hair out of her face, whispering soft reassurances as he coaxed her straight into an utterly blinding climax, just before he tumbled into his own accompanied by a low, impossibly appealing groan into her pronounced collarbone.

Though, of course, that holds no real comparison to the sound and feeling of the _shovel_ striking the back of her head once she had begun to set her clothing to rights. 

When she comes to, her hands are _bound_ and so is her mouth. Her vision swam with the intense pain blooming in the back of it and it was increasingly hard to keep her eyes open. The warmth blooming at the back of her head was nearly enough to lull her back into unconsciousness, the tell-tale signs of a concussion, if she had to put a name to it. At least, that was what her medical training said. Medical training didn’t amount to shit, however, when you were bound by tight ropes in the Mojave dirt. 

She can _hear_ the shovel striking down into the ground. They meant to bury her here. 

That _conniving_ fucking snake. 

“You got what you were after, so pay up.” 

“You’re cryin’ in the rain, pally.” She heard Benny speak to his Khan friends. 

When her vision finally came to something clearer, she tried to speak. She tried to _scream_ , but the only thing to come out was her muffled protesting. She looked down to her hands, desperately trying to find a way to dispense of the bindings that were so tight that she could _feel_ the circulation being cut off. 

Wasn’t like it fucking mattered much anymore. By the sounds of it, they meant to have her in the dirt by the time the sun hit the horizon. 

_“Guess who’s waking up over here?”_

Jo looked up to see the three men standing over her. Benny, pleased as punch, smoking his cigarette, seemed smug as all hell by the fact that he managed to get her pants off of her before he put her in the grave. His two Khan friends stood beside him, on each side, both seemingly tweaked out of their gourds now. 

She assumed the one holding the shovel was the one that got her. Though, the semantics hardly mattered. 

Benny dropped his cigarette into the dirt and stomped it out with his foot, something grave about the way he held himself. It was nothing like the fun, loose man that had seduced her in that saloon. The one who spoke of the world bending to her feet. 

“Time to cash out,” He declared, before making his way to stand directly over her. 

The look she gave him _felt_ hopeless, when her face contorted to the expression. A silent plea to stop whatever he had planned, a subtle and innate optimism that he’d just renounce this whole thing all together. 

He seemed nonplussed by it, his gaze now cold and unfeeling. 

“Would you get it over with?” One of his Khan friends said, becoming increasingly irritated by their bosses lingering. 

Benny simply held up a finger to silence him, power _exuding_ from him as if it were his God-given aura. 

“Maybe _Khans_ kill people without lookin’ ‘em in the face,” He spoke confidently, passing looks between both Jo and his friend, “But I ain’t a _fink_ , dig?” 

Jo watched in sheer, unabashed horror as he reached into that awful fucking suit and pulled out the package she was supposed to be carrying to Vegas. How had he known? Had she _told_ him? The evening’s memories only came in bits and pieces, muddled somewhere between the amount of alcohol imbibed and the blunt force trauma of being knocked out by a shovel. 

_I don’t want to die._

The thought seemed petulant even as it crossed her mind. She obviously had no choice in the matter, despite craving that optimism she had before she left Shady Sands and her family behind. Optimism that told her that so long as she listened to her gut, she’d be alright. 

But she _didn’t_ listen to her gut. And now, she was to pay the price. 

He pulled out a poker chip made out of platinum. A seemingly innocuous thing that she wasn't even sure why she was being paid so well to deliver it. This must have been why. The damn thing was sought after and signed her doom as neatly as a baron's signature on a land contract back in California.

“You’ve made your last delivery, kid.” His voice sounded nothing remotely remorseful from the fact that he was going to off her here, pushing that fucking chip back into his jacket, “Sorry you got twisted up in this scene.”

The gun came out of his suit pocket next and Jolene could feel the blood pumping against her ears already. She closed her eyes tightly. 

It seemed stupid to cry. Crying wasn’t going to help her whatsoever, but she was terrified. It wasn’t fair. Even if she didn’t listen to her gut instinct, it wasn’t fair that she had to go out like this. It took considerable control not to _grovel_ in her tears, only letting one escape from the corner of her eyes. 

“From where you’re kneeling, must seem like an 18-karat run of bad luck.” He pointed the gun at her head now and she could _feel_ the reverberation from the hammer being pulled back into place. 

“Truth is, the game was rigged from the start.” 

She once thought that death was one of the scariest, likely most painful experiences you could force the human body through. In the wastes, death was something you actively had to run away from. Survival was such an important concept that everyone made it seem like the worst thing you could feel. 

Oddly enough, she felt nothing as the bullets went through her head. 

Within seconds, she felt the blood, overwhelming and warm as she fell back into the dirt, eyes open and wide at the Mojave night. The sun was going to come up and she wasn’t going to see it. 

But the stars were _beautiful_ as they flitted prettily across the near-black sky.

Jo still remembered the feeling of being tossed into the shallow hole, the feeling of the dirt covering over her within a matter of seconds. Her body was full of warmth, edging her closer and closer to the abyss that waited for her on the other side. 

It felt like falling asleep. 

_I’m sorry, Dad. You were right. I wasn’t cut out for life outside of the capital._

— — —

When she woke up, she struggled to sit up from the searing pain shooting through her head. It made her breathe hard, labored and pained. Her hand immediately went to her forehead, confused as to why there was a bandage wrapped around it but wincing _hard_ when her fingers grazed over a spot that was particularly too sore to put any sort of words to. 

Where was she? She squinted, seeing nothing but what _seemed_ like a beige colored ceiling with a running fan and someone worrying over some tools from the chair next to the bed she found herself in. 

He must’ve been a doctor, with how he jumped in surprise the moment she started moving. There was something like disbelief across the older gentleman’s face when he leaned in to steady her as she sat up. Her vision was still swimming. 

“You’re _awake,_ how ‘bout that?” He spoke softly, “Woah, easy there. _Easy_. You've been out cold for a couple of days now. Why don’t you just relax a second? Get your bearings. Let’s see what the damage is. How ‘bout your name? Can you tell me your name?” 

She blinked in disbelief. Fuck, what was her name? Did she have a name? Obviously, she did. It would be entirely fucking absurd if she didn’t have a name. Come to think of it, what was she doing here in the first place? Her red brows knitted together in frustration as she tried to remember, desperately grasping on for any memories that came to mind. 

Which were not fucking much help. Something about a package and the number six. 

“.... Six?” Yeah, that felt right. Six. Six exhaled deeply and rested back against the peeling paint on the wall behind her. 

The doctor seemed amused by that. 

“Well, I can’t say it’s what I would’a picked for you, but if that’s your name, that’s your name.” He chuckled, “I’m Doc Mitchell. Welcome to Goodsprings.” 

The doctor gave her another once over and it suddenly struck her that she didn’t have nary a goddamn cap to give this man for his handiwork. He didn’t seem to care enough about it to ask. He said something about rooting around in her noggin to pull out the bits of lead from her brain and her expression paled. 

She was _shot._ In the head. And survived.

“How’d I do?” The Doc smiled at her kindly, offering her a mirror to look at herself. It didn’t occur to her until he was passing the mirror that she didn’t actually know what she looked like. 

Gaunt face, red hair, freckled cheeks, green eyes, skinnier than she would have liked. She assumed there wasn’t much that the good doctor could do about those things, so she simply handed him back the mirror and gave him a tight, uncomfortable smile. A nod, partially because she was afraid to hear her own voice at first. 

The Doc was an extremely kind man, come to find out. He didn’t ask her for any caps, gave her something to cover her mostly naked body, and a Pip-Boy to help her survive. He said something about a robot pulling her out of the grave, but she couldn’t remember a lick of it. He had a package slip that he apparently fished out of the pockets of her bloodied up clothes. Something about a chip made of platinum. 

It was then that she made up her mind. She’d find the person responsible for shooting her and they would have _hell_ to pay for leaving her with nothing to recall her life before she had apparently ended up in a shallow grave. 

She had a delivery to see to its completion. 

* * *

_Bang bang, he shot me down._

_Bang bang, I hit the ground._

_Bang bang, that awful sound._

_Bang bang, my baby shot me down._

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this floating around in my head for quite some time. Be gentle, I ain't posted fic in years now, but I wanted to throw some stories up about my Courier for fun's sake. Hope y'all get as much enjoyment out of Jolene as I do.


End file.
